TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
IN presenting the translation of this work
to the public, preceded by an Introduction in
which the author calls the attention of the
reader to the present social state of France,
I may perhaps be allowed to say a few words
on the inferences which are to be drawn from
the democratic institutions of America relative
to our own political condition. We live
at a time when so many of the maxims of
government are worn out, that in casting our
eyes upon the aphorisms of the great statesmen
of Europe, we are astonished to find that
the authority they attempted to defend is
vanished, and the principles by which they
defended it are no more. The book of ‘The Prince’ is closed for ever as a State manual;
and the book of ‘The People’—a book of
perhaps darker sophistries and more pressing
tyranny—is as yet unwritten. Nevertheless,
the events of every day ought to impress
upon our minds the necessity of studying
that element which threatens us; and for a
generation which is manifestly called upon to
witness the solemn and terrible changes of
the constitution of the empires of the earth,
the deadliest sin is thoughtlessness, the most
noxious food is prejudice, and the most fatal
disease is party-spirit. The relations between
men and power have been so indifferently
understood ever since the beginning of the
world, that we have found out no remedy for
evil but evil, no safety from injury but injury,
no protection from attack but attack; and
in all the wild experiments which a relaxed
social condition has undergone, we have only
had fresh confirmation of a truth enounced
by Lord Bacon, namely, that the logical part
of men's minds is often good, but the mathematical is nothing worth; that is, they can
judge well of the attaining any end, but cannot
judge of the value of the end itself. If
England has hitherto maintained a sober and
becoming position in the midst of greater
revolutions than the world has witnessed since
the Christian æra, not the less does it behove
her to meditate upon the lessons of her allies
and her descendants. What her increasing
intelligence might suggest, her increasing
evil, her increasing population, her burdens,
her crime, and her perils enforce: the
democratic element must be met, and to be met it
must be known, before the unhallowed rites
of destruction have begun; before recourse
has been had to the probabilities of chance, in
ignorance of the probabilities of cause;
before the vertigo of conquest has seized the
lower orders, or the palsy of dejection fallen
upon the aristocracy. It is presumed that
the lesson will not be the less worthy of our
attention because it is given us by a writer
whose national experience and whose standard of comparison is more democratic than
anything which we are acquainted with in
England. Although the reasonableness of
democracy is shown by the American States,
where the activity of a trading population is
dignified by the exercise of many civic virtues,
and where the task of the legislator was not
to change or to repair, but to organize and
create, the perilous erection of a central power,
such as now obtains in France, may check the
confidence with which the hand of the many
is raised against the errors of the few, and
we may hesitate before we displace the
time-honoured dispensers of social benefits, to
make way for the more compact and less
flexible novelties of the time. Those thinkers
who are wont in politics to substitute
principles of general utility for those of local
interests, are like builders who should in all
cases rely on the principle of gravity, to the
exclusion of the law of cohesion. The gift of
self-respect, which is the parent of the inward
dignity of the citizen, is not derived from the debasing and democratic turbulence of
party-spirit, affecting to compass the ends of the
State to which he belongs, but from the quiet
exercise of functions nearer home.
The translator of these pages had at one time some thoughts of curtailing the chapters in which the author describes the system of local administration in America, as somewhat redundant to the English reader. He has however retained them entire, from a belief that the time is fast approaching when it will not be less necessary to defend the local institutions which have subsisted for nearly a thousand years in our own country, than it is to advocate their advantages as the most probable remedy of the ills of France. Another reason—a purely historical one—led him to adopt this course. The English reader will probably be struck with the revival in the United States of the more ancient parts of our Constitution, whilst the Feudal or Norman element is totally excluded, except in a few cases which may be quoted as anomalies. Blackstone affirms (and the great authority of Selden corroborates the fact,) that the partible quality of lands by the custom of gavelkind is undoubtedly of British origin, and obtained universally before the æra of the Norman Conquest. The constitution of general public assemblies; the election of their magistrates by the people, their sheriffs, their coroners, their port-reeves, and even their tything-men; the dispensation of justice in the county-courts principally, except in cases in which the supreme authority of the Crown was called upon to interfere, are laws of Saxon parentage. These principles are the very basis of the American Constitution; and if the settlers of New England discarded the feudal rights, the royal justiciars, and the claims of primogeniture, when they relinquished the feelings, the traditions, and the character of English subjects, it is not without pride, mingled with admiration, that a Briton points to the common source of our liberties, and to that Saxon foundation of our national existence which we couple with the name of Alfred, and from which many of the institutions of the American States derive their being.
I cannot conclude without expressing a hope that this translation may tend to spread in England some of those sound and comprehensive views of the nature and tendency of the democratic element which its author has put forth in France; nor without expressing my very warm thanks to M. de Tocqueville for the kindness with which he has assisted me in the difficulties which presented themselves in preparing this book for the public eye. Whatever may be the success of the following pages, I shall always remember with pleasure that I was encouraged in my task by the high esteem and sincere regard which I entertain for the author.
Circumstances have rendered the separate publication of the first volume advisable, and this course was the more readily adopted as the first volume may be said to contain the whole of the analytical part of the work; and the second (which will follow in the course of a few weeks,) offers more general considerations upon the character, the vices, the motives, and the future destiny of the democratic people, the retiring Indians, and the wretched slaves of the United States of America.
Hampstead, 9th June, 1835.